Law Report Search Tips

Tips for Searching Commercial Division Law Reports

The Commercial Division Law Report contains leading opinions of the New York State Commercial Division Justices. The report, published periodically, contains decisions identified by the Justices for publication and many of these decisions are not reported elsewhere.

The search engine on this site allows you to research the development of case-law in the New York State Commercial Division or to view the opinions of specific Commercial Division Justices.

Keep in mind that the search you are performing will search on a Law Report-by-Law Report basis, not by each individual case. Consequently, you should design your searches to identify the individual editions of the Commercial Division Law Report that contain your search terms, and then, after identifying the particular decisions of greatest interest, you can click on a hyperlink to view specific decisions in their entirety.

Useful Search Tips:

- Search for the entire search term by typing it in the “exact phrase” box, rather than placing quotes around phrases, such as “piercing the corporate veil.”

- Place all of the search terms in the “with at least one of the words” search box, rather than placing “or” between search terms.

- Place all of the search terms in the “with all of the words” search box rather than placing “and” between search terms.

- Type variations of a word into the “with at least one of the words” box to search for a word that may appear in different forms. For instance, to search for cases on “piercing the corporate veil,” type all of the following words into the “with at least one of the words” box: “pierce” “piercing” “pierced”.

-Use the word near between two words in quotes to find two words close to each other on the page. For instance “breach” near “contract” will search for instances of the word breach occurring near the word contract.

Viewing the Results:

- Click on the “Text Version,” link at the bottom right-hand side of each result to see your search terms highlighted within the document. (This will allow you to scan each Commercial Division Law Report to determine if any of the decisions in that edition that contain your search terms meet your specific criteria.)

- Click on the hyper-link at the end of the summary to view the Court’s decision in its entirety.

- Use the “sort by date” feature located at the top of the search results screen to sort results by date.

The following are actual examples of search strings, and how they will narrow or refine your search:

Example 1.

Search Words: RamosSearch Box: "all of the words"Result: Editions of the Commercial Division Law Report with links to decisions written by Justice Ramos.

Example 2.

Search Words: Alter egoSearch Box: "all of the words"Result: Editions of The Commercial Division Law Report that contain all of the words "alter" and "ego"

Example 3.

Search Words:Alter egoSearch Box: "at least one" of the wordsResult: Editions of The Commercial Division Law Report that contain either of the words "alter" or "ego"